


"Many Bothans died to bring us this information..."

by imsfire



Series: Fragments from the multiverse [6]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Bad News, Danger, F/M, Shock, bearers of bad news, between TESB and ROTJ, minor character (OC) death, the second Death Star, trying not to give in to despair
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-20
Updated: 2018-12-20
Packaged: 2019-09-23 14:16:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17081867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imsfire/pseuds/imsfire
Summary: Two Alliance spies in the field receive bad news from a contact.  Very, very bad news...





	"Many Bothans died to bring us this information..."

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AstridMyrna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstridMyrna/gifts), [ibonekoen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ibonekoen/gifts).



Jyn wonders if Cassian notices how quiet she is on the ride home.  He probably does, though he’s withdrawn into silence too.  Generally he notices everything and says nothing, a skill and a habit honed by long years of observing and analysing, working undercover. 

Spying.  Call it what it is.  Spying, like they’re doing right now.

It’s ironic really, that when she finally has this faith in another person, this certainty that her trust won’t be betrayed, it should be someone who’d lived most of his life behind a façade of deceit.

They need that façade more than ever, now.  The mission had gone to hell in the beat of a few seconds.  It was scheduled to be a simple information exchange but she’d known something was wrong the moment their contact came into sight, slipping through the crowds with one hand pressed to their side and ears flattened with the effort of hiding pain.  The drop still happened; a few code words exchanged, Cassian clenching her hand under the table to stop her from reaching out as the contact struggled to stay upright; a rattle as the data chip was planted behind their kaf cups and the injured Bothan walked unsteadily away without looking back.  Jyn had sat shaking, hearing nothing for long minutes but the rush of blood and breath as she struggled to remain calm; and then the certainty descended like a blackout.  The sudden irrevocable knowledge that it was all in vain and their hope dies now. 

Picking up that little data-chip from the café table, as if it were nothing, as if it were not stained with blood and bought with two dozen lives.  Forcing her limbs to move; getting up, setting her chair straight, walking at Cassian’s side to the transport-stop and looking around blankly as if nothing were happening.  As if nothing – _nothing – **nothing**_ -

At first she didn’t speak because she couldn’t.  Her mind was a fire of darkness.  The transport had started before she remembered herself, enough to hold on, to make words, produce civilities, play her part. 

They’re due to ship out in the morning, and now more than ever it’s vital that no change of behaviour, however small, draws attention to them.  They cook and eat in their rented mini-apartment that night and he chats about the food, the kitchen equipment, the architecture, and how much you can learn about a building’s history from its fixtures and fittings and décor, the signs of refurbishments and extensions.  It isn’t his professional spy-chat, that terrifying repertoire of small-talk she’s seen him unveil once or twice, and that’s comforting.  It isn’t safe to discuss the intel they’ve just received, the horror of the lives it’s cost, but even if it were she doesn’t feel able to talk about it; not now, not yet.  Everything feels wrong; nerve-endings numbed, like the deadness of touch when all your fingers are burned. 

He doesn’t push her.  Not when she stumbles over her words and has to swallow when her throat is suddenly dry.  Not when her appetite is poor and she shifts the plate away still half-full.  Not even when she wakes panting from a bad dream and rolls over in the bed to wrap herself round him like a vine shaking in a gale.  He holds her close and says nothing.

There are dark shadows under her eyes in the morning and even with breakfast and kaf in her she struggles to wake up enough to talk.  The world is colourless today, muted.  Jyn doesn’t want to look at its greyness.  She’s empty, everything is empty.  No fuel left to power her on through the life remaining; and it’s so unfair to Cassian to be this broken-down thing in a broken-down world, but she can’t seem to wake up.  Not after yesterday, and that news.

And he doesn’t push her.

She loves him so very much.  He lets her be where she is, and who she is, without question or pressure.  So very few people have done that in Jyn’s life.  He lets her be, accepts her heart and mind in the state they are in, accepts that her exhausted body is only just still moving; fuel cell indicators blipping red, a minus sign where there should have been energy to draw upon.  Fumes, void, the cold dark vacuum in which somehow she’s still breathing.  Cassian accepts it all.

She knows he’s been there too.  Knows he must be feeling as sick and numb as she is, sick for the future and the rebellion and sick for her too.  Knows that he knows she won’t push him either. 

There’s so little reason to hope, once again, and she knows that brings them both down hard.  But however many years it takes, even if the war never goes away, the promise they’ve made to one another means they won’t let the news like this defeat them, or the days like these win. 

His hand-held comm is lying on the breakfast counter, next to her mug.  There’s a message light winking.  Cassian looks at it and then up at her.

“Do you feel ready to go?”

Jyn nods.  For a moment she doesn’t trust herself to speak, in the face of his unwavering love.  Reminds herself _This isn’t me, this is shock, this is dread and terror, this is the depression they bring.  This is the fruit of days like today, of news like the news we now bear._

_This is what I pledged to love him through, and he me._

_And I do.  And he does._

Whatever lies ahead this morning, she’ll go into it.  For him, for herself, for the future.  She swallows, noting her dry mouth again, and palpitations, cold hands. _It’s the shock, it isn’t the core of you.  It’s the intel, and the deaths that won this news for us; but if we can get it to the right people then all those lives won’t have been lost in vain.  It isn’t, it cannot be, the galaxy coming to an end.  We cannot allow it to be._

_We will fight it.  We will destroy it, again.  I have to believe we’ll get there._

And now it is morning, and they must get to the spaceport, and carry their news home. 

“I’m okay,” she says. “Let’s go.” 


End file.
